


a slow and steady race to the bottom

by TheDeadButcher



Category: Slenderverse - Fandom, TribeTwelve
Genre: Abuse, Car Ride, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Foreshadowing, Slenderverse, generally nothing is happy in the slenderverse so u know how it be, implications of occult activity, kinda sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 15:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13813893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDeadButcher/pseuds/TheDeadButcher
Summary: Milo and Mary are going to visit Noah. Milo has some thoughts.





	a slow and steady race to the bottom

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I don't own TribeTwelve. I'm just a fan. This is a fanwork.

Mary Asher was an outstanding woman. She had dealt with the death of her husband before their child was even born, had remarried, managed the house, managed her jobs, and dealt with the plethora of issues that came in different packages. Her relationship with her family wasn’t the best, there was some distance there in between. Cracks showing in on that home life that had once been built. No promise for a perfect reconciliation between her sister and herself but, then again, sometimes family was like that.

  


Mary Asher’s son was different.

  


Milo Asher was a lanky boy of thirteen. His hair was short, always shorn short, and most of the time he kept to himself in his room. He had a dark look about him that affected those near. Often they asked his extroverted mother what was wrong with the boy? Why he was so often cooped up in his room or why he listened to such harsh music? Milo Asher was a quiet boy by nature but it was so different from the rest of his closer family. Why was the boy so different?

  


Truth was, Milo knew his mom, his family really, better than anyone. He knew his mother’s breakdowns and his step-father’s frantic calls to hotlines. Knew his mother’s swings could have the whole household up for a night. Milo Asher was a young boy of thirteen but he had already seen his mother brandish a knife in her hand with a look in her eye like she could kill him. And so he withdrew from that.

  


They had been on the road for two hours now, windows down because the air conditioner in the car had been busted since May. Mary’s hair was splayed about, whipping about her head like a thousand little snakes. The morning sun catching her face just enough to make her look older than she really was. Deep set wrinkles on her face as she squinted, pushed down her sunglasses, and took a puff from her cigarette. If Milo looked close enough he could see the grey’s poking through the cheap hair dye she bought twice monthly. Reapplied over the age that began to show even when she was younger than this.

  


One hand was on the wheel, tapping a steady rhythm with the country music fading in and out on the radio. Otherwise it’s quiet in the car. No conversation. Now and again Milo fidgets with the headphones in his lap, contemplating pulling out the CD player from his backpack in the backseat but, unable to. A private, snide comment from his mother earlier had kept him from blocking the silence out.

  


“You’re not going to talk to me?”

  


It barely registers that her voice is less of a memory and more of the current situation. She glances at him and he can feel those eyes, prodding and poking like the monsters in his dreams. He catches a whiff of cheap perfume and cigarette smoke. They mix together to remind him of the earlier years; this same road trip made under the same pretenses. See family in Florida. Why didn’t they just live in Florida if their family lived there? At least then he would have a house to hide him. Noah had promised that. Milo could hide in his room.

  


That was the good thing about this trip. Seeing other family was great and all but, he loved seeing Noah. The closest person he could call a best friend. Noah was a few years younger than him with soft brown eyes. He was a few inches taller than Milo with an awkward smile and a warm heart. He had a disposition for quick curses under his breath which his mother would quickly chide him for. But, together him and Milo cursed up a storm in private.

  


“Milo. Goddamn, are you gonna keep ignoring me? I’m sitting right here.”

  


Her annoyed voice drags him out of his daze. It’s pitifully clear to her that everything she had just said went right over his head. Which was fine by him, he didn’t particularly want to listen to her anyways. Wasn’t his choice that he had to drive down with her. He would have preferred John coming along but, she always said it was a strictly family thing. Family gathering. Whatever.

  


She sighs, blowing smoke out her nose. It’s whipped away as the wind sweeps in and she’s left flicking the last of her cigarette out the window. The smoke that’s left leaves her, curling around as she rolls up the window on her side and his. It would be unbearably hot within a few minutes but apparently, this was an important conversation. One she didn’t want him missing. And much to his dismay, he had nothing better to do other than listen to her.

  


“ We’re only staying there for the week. Afterwards it’s back home. You’re not asking for an extra day this time, got it?”

  


There’s a quirk of his lip. He wants to stay in Florida with his family. He wants to stay away from his Mom and John. But, it isn’t his choice. She’s made it all too clear a multitude of times that it would never be his choice. Not so long as he lived in her household. “Yeah, mom. I understand.”

  


There’s a beat as he waits. She’s going to say something snide, he can feel it prickling in the air. It always feels like this. A distinct sense of emptiness fills him instead of dread. It’s painfully familiar these days. So much for the quiet drive.

  


Mary leans forward in her seat, fingernails clicking against the plastic of the radio as she turns it down and then off. The little music there was is abandoned to the ever-present humming of tire on tar.

  


“Recently, your dad and I-“

  


“John.”

  


She tightens her jaw at his interjection. Milo had never really gotten along with John either. “Your dad and I were talking about your therapy. We think it’s just… You being a teenager. An antisocial teenager.”

  


That didn’t explain the monsters. That monsters that he saw outside his window sometimes. The long, long, long man who sported no face and a cold chill. Who brought migraines and panic attacks like they were gifts. Didn’t explain the nightmares of a man whispering, crying, weeping, screaming. The gun gleaming in his hand as he hung his head and closed his eyes.

  


He was sick.

  


“You’re not sick.”

  


The constant dread, the promise that help could be revoked at any time, it terrified him. The medication helped. It stopped the migraines, slowed his heart, brought him back into reality where he could reason it out. The man in his dreams didn’t-

  


“I think the pills are making it worse.”

  


Milo whips his head around at his mother, brown eyes wide and shocked. Help. Revoked. Not allowed. “No, I… I’ll stop going to therapy. The pills help me sleep. Mom, please. Please.” His voice creaks. He shouldn’t have to beg like this. Only he does because it really is that easy. He doesn’t know why she’s doing this other than to exercise control over him. It’s always about proving something. The dread sinks into his core, fills up his being. Panic sends him shaking and she says nothing.

  


A minute goes by. He whimpers and she shushes him. Her window rolls back down and she lights another cigarette, taking a deep breath. It’s as if the conversation didn’t happen. It’s as if she had given him closure to the situation and he wasn’t sitting there, panicking over the future she’s already decided for him. Toughen him up, John liked to say, gripping his shoulder a little too tight. Give him something to really cry about, those eyes and set jaw hissed. John’s countenance promised violence but never delivered. Mary’s promised a living home and never delivered.

  


They are miles down the road before she speaks to him again, smoke curling over her face and sunglasses in place. The afternoon sun catching her hair like a blazing gold statue. Some great beheaded thing sitting on her tan shoulders. His mother seems worse than the thing that stares at him while he’s sleeping but, she is the only one who has told him any answers. While the threat of withholding those answers was always hanging over his head, she was the only one who could tell him what was wrong with him.

  


What was wrong with them.

  


He needed to know. To stop whatever was happening from happening. From spreading to others in the family. He needed to save Noah from this. So he wouldn’t see the long man too. So he wouldn’t have the nightmares. He could stop this. Cut off the source.

  


Kill the source.

  


Mary takes a deep drag of her cigarette, tossing what was left out the window in a cloud of ash and smoke. She’s annoyed but refuses to speak further on the matter of medication. He’s in no place to fight her, fiddling even more with the headphones in his lap and struggling to make a choice. To speak, to fill the silence, to decide, to speak up against the threats. Finally, finally talk her out of hurting him again. Of going into another episode. He could help the family.

  


“I want you to try to find a job this summer.”

  


“Yes, mom.”

  


And that moment never comes. He’s taken away on another daze, thinking about the man in his dreams and the raspy voice he speaks in. Why did he sound so familiar?

  


“I love you, Milo.”

  


Why did he cry so much?

  


“I love you, Milo.”

  


How could he speak with his throat slit like that?

  


“I love you too, Mom.”


End file.
